Word Origin & History

regulate c.1630, from L.L. regulatus, pp. of regulare "to control by rule, direct" (5c.), from L. regula "rule" (see regular). Regulation is first recorded 1672, "act of regulating;" sense of "rule for management" is first attested 1715. Regulator is first recorded 1655; in Eng. history, with a capital R-, "member of a commission appointed in 1687 to manage county elections." In U.S. history, applied to local posses that kept order (or disturbed it) in rural regions c.1767-71. Meaning "clock by which other timepieces are set" is attested from 1758.

Example Sentences for regulative

That is 035using teleology as a regulative principle, in Kant's sense of the word.

A regulative principle must, therefore, have been at the foundation of this opinion.

Regulative training often calls for rousing words from the teacher.

Though not constitutive, yet are they regulative principles.

The formal or regulative laws of religious thought occupy it.

These regulative principles are known as The Canons of the Syllogism.

It is essentially due to the character of the regulative ideas of our age.

For a man's idea of God is fundamental, regulative of all his religious thinking.

The second regulative idea of speculative reason is the conception of the universe.

The psychological idea is, therefore, meaningless and inapplicable, except as the schema of a regulative conception.